


Litter

by agatharights



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One)
Genre: Gen, Kinda Crack, Kittens, M/M, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Mech Preg, Sparklings
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-05-12
Updated: 2015-05-12
Packaged: 2018-03-30 06:45:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,354
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3926872
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/agatharights/pseuds/agatharights
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ravage is more secluded than usual, Skids comes across one pit of a surprise while working through the vents, and Megatron could probably stand to explain himself at some point. This will probably just wind up being little random drabbles and shorts, added whenever I manage them.</p><p>I didn't intend to actually get invested in this idea it was supposed to be a joke but now everything is full of kittens I'm so sorry.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Litter

Skids was the first to discover the den, much to his misfortune. It wasn't that he'd made a habit of crawling around the ventilation system (although it was a handy way to get around, especially with a little help from a grappling hook) but when the yowling started, well...curiosity had been stronger than the threat of getting stuck in a vent. Again.

It had started in the middle of a recharge cycle, startling a few dozen bots in their hab suites and leaving those who heard it with ringing aches in their audials. A screeching, animal sound that echoed from an unknown source and lasted for half a cycle.

When it suddenly stopped, replaced by the background noise of the ship itself again, it was...worrying, in a different way.

So Skids, knowing his way around the vents, investigated. Maybe a better phrase would have been 'got nosy' or 'was going to kick whatever was making that sound out an airlock' but those were trifling details as he dragged himself along, careful not to go down anywhere too narrow for his frame.

He was on a mission, slag it, and he didn't want to get himself wedged in here. Not when he'd already been jerked so rudely out of recharge by the godawful yowling...

It wasn't until he heard sounds besides the rumble of the ship or the shaking of cybertronian pedes, the sounds of voices and chirps of technology, that he knew he was getting close. There was some kind of small noise, like...whimpers? No, like cries, very, very small cries.

He pushed himself towards the sound, through an opening...and saw what he would have described as a nest. Mesh blankets. Pillows. Was that a berth-mattress, half-torn apart? All stacked up in the center of a wide junction, stains of energon and a golden fluid spattered about the floor.

He paused, something in that /nest/ stirring, and suddenly found himself nose to muzzle with angry red optics set in a cougaraider's face.

Ravage snarled. " _GET OUT_." A growl deep enough that it could be felt through the metal walls of the ventilation shaft.

"Yeah, okay-" Skids started to push himself backwards, officially too 'weirded out' to stick around, and when there was a dull clunk as his shoulders clipped, then caught the edge of the opening he'd crawled through, he swallowed hard. Oh, no, this was not the time to get stuck.

"I said _LEAVE_ -" The cassetticon hissed, tail lowering and lashing dangerously.

"I'm stuck-!"

Ravage didn't seem to care for the explanation, and the habsuites were treated to another round of screeching yowls. This time, accented with a mech's pained shouts and several loud thumps and bangs.

"It sounds like a cybercat. A dying cybercat." Rodimus groaned, looking up at a vent, Magnus and the security team hovering nearby, trying to get the Lost Light's own internal diagnostics to identify where the commotion was coming from.

"It may very well be." Magnus dryly spoke, wondering when, or if, Megatron was going to respond to the communication he'd sent. After all, unless a pneuma-lion had somehow stowed away onboard when they'd left Cybertron, there was only one feline they knew of...

He was pulled by his thoughts from the banging and thumping suddenly getting louder, closer, accompanied by a long string of curses. A crack, and Rodimus barely dodged out of the way as the vent casing above him was dislodged and Skids ungainly fell to the ground.

"Ooch." Rodimus eyed up the scrapes covering his face and arms with a sympathetic wince. They didn't look deep, cosmetic really, but still.

"Skids." Magnus reached down and pulled him up, as he grumbled and patted dust off the front of his chestplate. "It is generally accepted to use the hallways to travel, rather than the ventilation system."

"Yeah, yeah." He wheezed and let his fans flare slightly, giving out a puff of dusty buildup. "You're not gonna believe what's gotten into the cat's grill!" He suddenly grinned, humorlessly, and everybody (even Magnus, if only to a very slight degree) leaned in.

"Kittens!"

\----------

"We're not speaking." Megatron grumbled when confronted, sitting in his spartan quarters, morosely distracting himself with a datapad. "Ravage and I had an...argument, a deca-cycle ago. I haven't seen them yet."

Magnus frowned, suspicious. He thought that if someone could get the cassette out with as little fuss as possible, it would be best, and for that he would need Megatron. "But you heard him?"

"I did. It would've been hard not to." The former leader of the Decepticons scowled, looking pointedly away at the wall. There was tension in his frame, more than usual, Magnus noted. "Did you find out what he was screaming about?"

Ultra Magnus took a split moment to consider how to phrase this.

"It would seem that Ravage has managed to produce offspring."

He had expected Megatron to scoff, or rage, or even appear disturbed at the realization. Instead, though...Megatron was staring at him, red eyes wide, looking every bit like a bot about to undergo a processor crash.

"... _offspring_." He mumbled, quietly...and sat down on the berth, looking blankly into the wall.

A small, distressing through scratched at the back of Ultra Magnus' mind, and he took a deep invent, quashing the unsettled sensation in his spark and hoping that it was nothing more than a stray thought.

"We need to remove Ravage from the vents. I don't suppose you could assist?"

"...I'll try." Megatron huffed, sounding tired, as he stood. "But I can't garuntee that Ravage is going to listen to me, right now, nor anytime in the near future." It was said with a sort of grimace, the ex-Decepticon still managing to avoid looking directly at Ultra Magnus.

\---------

Rodimus tried his hardest not to let Megatron see him laugh when he shrunk to better fit in the vents, size-displacement uncomfortable on his frame and enduring the additional discomfort of Magnus lifting him up to the broken vent. The climb wasn't long, with Skids' directions, and he knew that Ravage sensed him well before he came near the junction.

" _Get out_." The felinoid hissed, red eyes rising out of the darkness and a glimmer of claws.

"Ravage." He held very still, letting the other slowly approach. "...we should talk."

"I have _nothing_ to talk to you about!" Yowled. Megatron winced, slightly, knowing that the others were probably listening in, a close ear on the vents as it were. "Leave me."

"Do you mean 'leave _us_ '?" It was a low blow, but the stiffness that went down Ravage's spine down to the angry lash of his tail was plenty telling. "...I want to see them."

The cassette didn't say anything, but simply turned and padded down the vents. Permission enough, and Megatron followed. The junction a proper den. He absently wondered how long Ravage had actually been residing here- since he snuck onto the ship? It was certainly well-hidden, easy to protect. The kind of place Ravage would gravitate towards, somewhere unseen.

Especially considering the situation.

Ravage paced to the side of the little nest, sitting stiffly, warily...and Megatron swallowed as he counted the tiny pairs of red optics that peered up over the edge at him, one by one.

One...two...three...four...five. Five total. A literal handfull.

_mew. mee. meeeew._

"They're...small." He chanced, uncertain, looking at Ravage for approval to move closer.

"Not small enough." Angry, hissed...but with a playful air to it. A jab. "The big ones I know who to blame for."

Megatron moved closer, kneeling and reaching to touch a tiny head, the armor protoform-soft under his servo, the tiny sparkling pressing up against him with a soft keen.

_meeee._

\----------

Everybody went very, very quiet when Megatron re-emerged from the vents, dropping to the floor with surprising grace as he regained his natural size, the relaxing of his size displacement taking a very literal weight out of his subspace.

 _[[First Aid, please ready a berth in the medbay for a sparkling exam.]]_ He commed, looking up. Everybody was waiting, seemingly holding their vents in, before Ravage's head poked out from the vent above...a tiny meweling thing in his mouth.

_meee! meeew! meee!_

The kitten was dropped into Megatron's waiting hands, and Rodimus let out a soft sound of disbelief. Or perhaps that was delight?

"It's so tiny! Hah!" He tried to peer close, grinning.

"That would be the right size for a cougaraider sparkling." Magnus cut in, before Ravage's head appeared again.

Another kitten. And another. And another.

And then...a mechlet.

That turned the unsettled murmurs that had started into silence again, this time awkward and thick, as Megatron reached up and took the squirming bit into his arms, already filled with nervous, keening kittens.

"What are you looking at?" Ravage finally hissed as he dropped to the floor, keeping close to Megatron's ankles. Megatron gave a look around.

"You may all disperse." He said, flatly, an order rather than a well-worded request in truth, and security waited until Magnus nodded before they started to mill away, shooting glances back as Megatron began the steady trek to the medbay.

He'd been through too much in his long, strange life to start caring about how this looked, right now. Rodimus just gaped after him, before grabbing Magnus' arm impulsively, yelping louder than he'd intended or cared to be.

"Magnus- that Mechlet- it looked a lot like- and I mean a pit of a lot like Megatron-"

\----------

"I...I really don't know much about sparklings. Much less cyberzoology." First Aid stared at the berth. Ravage lay upon it, keeping the kittens and bitlet from moving too far, watching with a dangerously narrowed expression as First Aid picked them up, one by one, to scan.

Megatron kept oddly quiet, looming near.

"Do, uh, do you have any designations?" He picked up the mechlet first, an oddity amongst it's..siblings, larger than all but one of them, distinctively familiar despite it's soft, unfinished armor. Red Alert was trying very hard not to mention that it looked a lot like Megatron.

A lot.

Right down to the stern way it's little lips pouted and it's red eyes narrowed, as if judging despite barely being able to crawl on it's own. If it weren't for the tail and the claws it could've been a Megatron himself as a sparkling, if he hadn't been cold-constructed.

Sharp claws, to boot, and First Aid winced, careful not to drop them as they whined.

"That one is...Pride." Ravage practically purred out the name, and First Aid took a long invent before taking the quick scans and placing the kitten back, composing the new medical file quickly. At least the mechlet was fairly standard, silver-white gleaming in it's armor.

"Stalk." Neither the largest nor smallest of it's siblings, a quiet kitten that made no sound in First Aid's hands, only watching him as it was handled and scanned. It wasn't until First Aid was bringing it back to Ravage's side when it sank small, sharp fangs into the joints of his servo and managed to tug a small energon line free, a few drops of shining pink falling on it's dark gray armor.

"Awk-" First Aid swallowed hard. "Fiesty, aren't they?" He let out a nervous laugh, and found that Megatron...actually smiled, slightly. It was a subtle thing, around the eyes more than his mouth, but it was there.

The next one...small. One of the two smallest. Was this really how small cougaraider cubs were? At least it was a lively little thing, meweling and crying out and trying to climb up First Aid's arms. "Pounce." Ravage named it, and true to it's designation as soon as it was given leeway it lept up onto the poor Medic's face with a delighted yowl and he staggered back.

"You've put some thought into their names, I see." Megatron commented dryly, to Ravage, as First Aid wheeled backwards, trying to tug and overly affectionate and nibbling kitten from his helmet.

"They have made their personalities well known, in very little time." Ravage purred, Pounce complaining in a series of loud cries as they were scanned and hastily placed back to resume squirming and clumsily starting to climb onto it's carrier's back, silvery armor against Ravage's black.

First Aid paused for a second, torn between the smallest and the largest of the remaining two, before reaching for the smallest- who immediately rolled out from under his servos with a soft sound.

_mrr?_

"C'mere, you're next-" They rolled again, swatted at his fingertips, then clumsily started to crawl away, making good time for being more an act of repeatedly falling than actually walking.

"That one is Chase."

"Can't imagine why you'd name him that-" Finally, First Aid caught the squirming thing, who hissed and whined, and completed his scans. Much like his other small brother, a muted shade of gray and light in build, as Ravage was. At least Chase needed only to be released on the berth before it darted back to Ravage.

And then...the big one.

The largest of the litter, bigger even by slight than it's mechlet sibling, curled up against Ravage's side and warily watching First Aid. First Aid moved cautiously. "And this one is...?"

"Savage."

The name made First Aid pause, and perhaps it was the pause or some deep-born instinct for good timing, but Savage chose that moment to strike, and First Aid yowled like a cougaraider himself as sharp claws and a powerful, small jaw yanked a protective plate clean off the tip of his servo.

Megatron could not help himself. He laughed, watching the frantic medic trying to snatch the armored patch of his fingertip back from the large, heavily-built cub, who seemed quite pleased with his prize.

He wasn't sure what he'd expected, but it certainly hadn't been Ravage's compliance.

 _This could have turned out much worse_ , he thought, watching the kittens and mechlet squirm and mewel in amusement at their largest sibling's defiance. Much, much worse, considering their surprise appearance.

**Author's Note:**

> I don't have any excuses for this other than that I was like "haha lol Megatron/Ravage" and literally minutes later I was actually invested in this terrible idea and I'd designed children for them. I'm sorry.
> 
> You read it, you can't un-read it. I'll probably add more? I have quite a lot of plans for these kittens...  
> If anybody's curious for some vague sketches of how they'll look all grown up, here you go; http://agatharights.tumblr.com/post/118819736780/in-case-anybody-wanted-to-see-my-really-hasty


End file.
